He Was Only Temporary, The Memories Were Permanent
by CarlyB10
Summary: Blair is living in denial. So what does she do? She over-rationalizes, naturally. *This is my first attempt at fan fiction, so any reviews, even if its just to let me know that someone other than myself read it, is love*


"_We are nothing alike!" __  
_Blair often ran those words through her mind, they were her comfort. After all, they were true. Her and Chuck Bass? Anyone could see that they were nothing alike. Blair had always, since she was born, had a tendency to be obsessive. Her appearance was always impeccable, her grades were perfect. And now she was obsessing over something else, a casual comment from Chuck himself, the day that the two of them had been sitting in Blair's own bedroom, scheming against Serena, when Chuck had laughed his soft, ironic laugh and said 'Blair, you and I are two of a kind". At the time, the comment had barely registered with her, but now it occupied her mind almost constantly, and her only defence was that one line...  
"_We are NOTHING alike!"__  
_

Because she was Blair Waldorf. One of the top in her class at Constance Billard School for Girls, while the only reason Chuck Bass was still in school was due to numerous donations on behalf of his father. She was, despite recent setbacks, Queen B. He was a notorious womanizer, with the worst reputation around. She had, until not so long ago, been in a steady relationship with one of the most enviable boys in the Upper East Side. He had been with plenty of girls, both desirable and undesirable, all over town.

A small, reassured smile spread over Blair's face. Not only were they nothing alike, they were practically opposites.  
The perfect daughter vs. the son that causes nothing but trouble  
The beautiful, aloof and envied vs. the boy who would, if not for his fathers vast bank account, have a criminal record, most likely.  
The girl who spent her life working on her relationship with Nate vs. to the boy who settled for instant gratification with any one of his sluts (yes, she did say that with slightly more venom in her voice than necessary. And no, it was most certainly not because she was jealous).  
The one who'd had her perfect life planned out since she was a little girl, vs. him, who spent his life making things up as he went along, not planning for anything more than his immediate gain.  
The pure, untouched vs. the... Well, the man-whore. There was no other way to put it.  
Opposites in ever sense of the word.

_"But don't they say that opposites attract?" _said a small voice in her subconscious. The smile snapped into a frown and her forehead creased. _"No way. I can not believe you even thought that. Pretend you didn't. Quick, think of something else!"__  
_

_"We're different, SO different..." _yes, that was a much better thought. _"Too different... We would have never worked out anyway..." _Wait, that wasn't right! She hadn't wanted them to work out. She didn't want to think of them being together, and she definitely didn't want to think about them not being together with regret! She just wanted... Blair paused. Her head was spinning. Different, but the same. Oh God. She had to stop this train of thought somehow.

Nate. Now there was a safer subject. Sure, they'd had their problems lately, but the fact remained, they'd been together so long that surly this was only a temporary stumbling block. Nate and her _belonged _together. She loved him... Always had, always will.

_"Love?" _The inner voice was back. _"Is that really love? Is that as good as it gets? Constantly working for your relationship, fighting for it, and the end result being 'comfortable'. That's not what you wanted, Blair. This isn't the fairytale romance you hoped for..." __  
_

But she had been unrealistic! Her relationship with Nate, even during the best times, she now realised, was not the storybook love that she had always longed for. She had never felt the deep emotions that she had expected came with love. Yes, she had been devastated when she found out about Nate and Serena, but that had been the pain of the betrayal of her best friend more than the thought of losing her boyfriend. And she had been thrilled when, on her birthday, Nate had called and asked her to take him back. But that was because she had gotten exactly what she wanted, as she always did. And relief that she wouldn't have to admit to anyone that they had broken up, not knowing how they would react. Not Serena, her and Serena were past that now, but the other girls who looked up to her in awe, her 'minions' as Serena sometimes jokingly referred to them. But she had never felt anything that strong for Nate.

_"Unrealistic," _she reminded herself. Books, movies, TV shows... They lied. People didn't really feel like that, they didn't fall in love the way that movie directors wanted you to think. In reality, it was hard work, and really, wasn't being comfortable enough? Wasn't it enough to find someone who it was easy to be with? It had to be. Maybe that was what love really was, not grand, sweeping romantic gestures and being unable to get them off your mind, or not being able to deny it no matter how much you tried to convince yourself otherwise. That didn't really happen... She couldn't expect that... But it had already happened.

_"Chuck,"__  
_

And here she was, back to thinking about him all over again.

Blair and Chuck had been friends for a long time, and at one point Blair would have said that he knew her and understood how she worked better than anyone, although she would rather go for a year without her weekly manicure than admit that now. They had been close, closer than most people realised, but it had been entirely platonic. She was; after all, devoted to Nate, and he was devoted to his own playboy lifestyle. But that night at Victrola, something had shifted. He had been there to pick her up and make her feel special when she was down, and she had been the only girl who hadn't gotten out of his head at the same time as she got out of his bed. And... She had been denying it for a long time now... He wasn't the only one who had experienced butterflies.

Blair collapsed on her bed, her brown hair fanning out around her, frustrated by the fact that not only could she not control her life, she couldn't even control the thoughts inside her head. That was it, enough. She reached into the draw beside her bed and pulled out two of her mothers sleeping tablets, the ones that she had stored there 'in case of emergency'. She couldn't get Chuck Bass out of her mind. This was _definitely_ an emergency. She swallowed the two tablets down and within five minutes a familiar feeling wove around her, she felt her eyelids grow heavy as she finally drifted off to sleep.

Little did she know that, in a different building not so far away, the boy that she was nothing alike was struggling with the exact same thoughts.

Because despite outwards appearances, they weren't that different.  
They both wanted to be loved, and were afraid of it in equal measures. So Blair took cover behind her relationship with Nate, and convinced herself that she wasn't really hiding from anything, but that she was happy. And Chuck buried himself in liaisons with various girls, while never allowing them close enough to form anything real. They both cut themselves off from the thing that they wanted by concealing themselves behind the thing itself.  
They had both learned to rely on their money and the powers of manipulation rather than on the people around them, because they had been let down before. Which was why neither of them would ever admit how they felt about the other person to another living soul. Possibly not even to themselves.

But at the same time, they were both stubborn, and refused to give in to anything. Not to mention the fact that Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass always got what they wanted. And it just so happened that what they wanted was each other. Which was why maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't let the fear of falling stand in the way of their chance to fly. Their chance to find everything they had wanted, that they might have even found without realising it, in each other.


End file.
